From Masotopia to Thigmotaxis: the Tame of Paradoxal Spaces

Abstract

Architecture is rooted in the web of metaphors by which man lives. These metaphors are rooted not so much in our thinking as in our body. However, the establishment of the monopoly of optocentrism subordinated these metaphors to the technological and clinical logic of the organization of space, sterilizing it, exploiting the geons – namely, the invariants with respect to the point of view, and forming masotopia, i.e. places that reduce person’s abilities, reduce the essence of one’s activity to nothing and, accordingly, deepen feelings of despair and guilt. The challenge is to compel a thigmotactic turn in smart city planning. Tigmotaxis in ecology is an orientation by a variety of points of contact with the environment, which allow you to resist currents, take the optimal position of the body and maintain tone. To balance the geon monopoly with thigmotaxis means to re-actualize the bodily resource: emotional, sensory, behavioral. The article shows that such a re-actualization can only be carried out by updating the metaphorical strategies embodied in the organization of space using technologies for glitch-therapy: appealing to visual and informational data, which were considered redundant or garbage (creating noise, glitch, monster). The article is intended for media philosophers, anthropologists, urbanists and digital culture theorists.

Keywords

• thigmotaxis
• metaphor
• paradoxical object
• geon
• glitch therapy
• masotopia
• epidemiology of imagination
• cognitive exploitation
• opticomonocentrism
• existential design